Artistic Expressions

UVa-Wise Art Instructor Receives $8,000 Fellowship From Virginia Museum Of Fine Arts

WISE, Va. – Heather Harvey laughed a little when she talked about showing off her artwork.
It’s just not something that you can carry around, said Harvey, a Big Stone Gap resident who teaches art at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise.
Harvey makes sculptures for site-specific installations. Hers is a type of visual art designed for a specific gallery space, open area or architectural setting.
This year, in Virginia, she has an installment slated for exhibit at Washington & Lee University in Lexington.
She’s also excited about what artistic projects she can now pursue thanks to a recent $8,000 fellowship awarded by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
“I do installations and objects that I call paintings, but they’re really kind of sculptural paintings,” Harvey said. “And the fellowship that I got was for installations, which are sculptures. I won in the sculpture category.”
Harvey, who grew up in Syracuse, N.Y., is one of 14 professional artists to have recently received the fellowship.
Over the past 69 years, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has presented $4 million in fellowships to 1,069 professional and student artists. Money for the fellowships comes from a privately endowed fund administered by the museum.
“Winning this fellowship is particularly critical to supporting this type of artwork,” Harvey said. “Commercial galleries have a hard time with installations because they are more difficult to sell. I also have to travel to specific locales to install my art. This fellowship allows me to do more and to do it better.”
Better yet, there are “no strings attached,” said Harvey, a graduate of the College of William & Mary at Williamsburg, Va. “It’s completely up to you how you spend it.”
Often, too, there may not be a chance to recoup an investment with installation art, since many site-specific installations are destroyed once an exhibition is over.
Harvey has plans to spend her fellowship to partly assist in travel expenses when she installs her art at a gallery in Delaware, later this year.
On the campus in Wise, Harvey teaches such courses as art history and painting. She also coordinates the exhibits at the Charles W. Harris Galley, located inside the Wise County Public Library in Wise.
“I think most people who would look at my work would say it’s abstract,” Harvey said. “They’re really like more hybrids between sculptures, paintings and drawings. They’re a little bit more architectural, because I work right on the wall ... like visual poetry.”

YOU SHOULD KNOW
What: Art by Heather Harvey
Web: http://www.heather-harvey.net